Meta’s Ravi Garg on fortifying Business Messaging on WhatsApp

The year 2023 has started on a rollercoaster note, with an accelerated adoption of generative AI, AI chatbots, and digital innovations. This is bringing in new operational efficiencies, stronger strategies, a far greater emphasis on building deep bonds with various stakeholders and consumers. In keeping with the current market ecosystem, technology and a human approach are seen as going hand in hand.

As part of our annual TRENDING NOW series, Adgully has been approaching key industry leaders to Crystal Gaze into 2023 to highlight the major trends and developments that they see dominating the industry in the year ahead.

In conversation with Adgully, Ravi Garg, Director - Business Messaging, India at Meta, speaks about key trends in customer experience in 2023, the immense potential of the WhatsApp Business App, key focus areas for Whatsapp to grow businesses and consumer engagement in the year ahead, and much more.

Key trends dominating customer experience in 2023

Some of the key trends that we see in customer experience in 2023 include:

1. There is a transformational shift in how customers and brands are engaging through new and digital models instead of the traditional ways.
2. Brands are increasingly realising the value and potential of engaging customers in personalised, relationship-building conversations on their preferred messaging platform/s. Rich, personalised conversations have become critical in nurturing customers through their purchase life cycle.

Business messaging is the way forward and here’s why:

In India, WhatsApp is now a part of people’s daily lives. People love to message friends, family, their neighbourhood shop, or just about anybody on WhatsApp.

Over time, we have learnt that user-preference is to message businesses and shops too, over WhatsApp. In fact, in a survey that Kantar conducted for us last year, we learnt that 70% of the surveyed online adults prefer messaging a business. Given such strong consumer insights, we have innovated and created new options for businesses of all sizes to engage with users on WhatsApp.

Business Messaging on WhatsApp is conversational and gives a personal customer experience, it's rich and engaging - adding to customer satisfaction, it is persistent in giving the customers what they want or need, it complements other existing marketing strategies.

Business messaging helps brands understand and meet customer requirements quickly. For brands, it is advantageous to interact personally with customers, at scale.

It, therefore, enhances the customer’s experience, and the fact is that these rich conversations are happening quickly and on a medium, that’s preferred by the customers, so it’s more efficient.

The interactions evolve from mere clicks to deeper engagement and conversions and in the process the brands can get the opportunity to mature customers throughout their purchase lifecycles basis their likes and preferences.

Businesses of all sizes, across sectors, are already turning to WhatsApp to reach their customers.

We think that with WhatsApp, we have the opportunity to create a new wave of adding value and convenience to the everyday lives of our users – whether it is banking, shopping, book cab rides, charge their Metro passes on the go, pay their bills, place a complaint, order groceries like one can with  JioMart on WhatsApp or receive tickets on WhatsApp through MakeMyTrip,  literally one can do everything at the click of a button on WhatsApp.

More examples:

• With the Government of India’s MyGov Helpdesk chatbot on WhatsApp even today any one can download our Covid Vaccination certificates or Digilocker documents like Driver’s License, and others, right on WhatsApp.
• With Bengaluru’s Namma Metro - BMRCL and several more, people can now simply buy their tickets or recharge their metro-passes on WhatsApp while on-the-go.
• There are over 250 million policyholders throughout the country who can now access LIC services 24X7 on LIC’s WhatsApp chatbot. You can check your premium, buy a policy and much more.

All this has been possible with medium or large businesses using our WhatsApp Business Platform, our enterprise API, that enables businesses to connect with customers and offer custom services, at scale.

At the same time, enabling and empowering the small business ecosystem in the country is of immense importance to us. We believe, for a growing economy like India, strengthening the ecosystem of 60 million plus small businesses is of immense value as they are the backbone of the economy.

I’m delighted to share that WhatsApp Business App, our simple, manual, free-of-cost app, especially created keeping in mind the Indian micro and small enterprises, has today empowered millions of SMBs and micro-entrepreneurs. It has features like the Catalog, or Labels, or Away Messages, that help to advance their customer-service.  The pandemic was a catalyst for small businesses across to adopt such simple digital technology and the trend continues to grow.

Let me share some examples: Bhumika Kandpal & Sheela Padte from Mumbai run Revive Beauty & Hair Salon that saw a 30% increase in sales after they digitised their operations on the WhatsApp Business App. Similarly, a blue-pottery small business from Rajasthan, Neerja International Inc., was able to expand their business hugely once they started using the WhatsApp Business App.

Major expectations from 2023

WhatsApp has become a way of life for people in India. People are connecting on WhatsApp because it is so simple to use and does not require any tech knowledge for anybody. This is where the opportunity lies. Millions of users who are comfortable using WhatsApp may or may not be comfortable downloading/ visiting an app or connecting on a portal. For reaching such incremental consumers WhatsApp is the answer. It is an exciting time and opportunity to explore the untapped potential of business-messaging through WhatsApp. Businesses of all sizes can use ‘messaging’ to build versatile, custom solutions, have deeper conversations with the customers and nurture them.

For example, Uber first launched a pilot of their WhatsApp to Ride (WA2R) service for users in Lucknow. The pilot impact initially revealed that the WA2R audience is younger than the average Uber App users with almost 50% of them being less than 25 years old. More importantly, 33% of the inbounds during this pilot were received from new users, indicating the potential of WhatsApp to acquire new customers.

WhatsApp is a user-first platform, and our focus and priority will always be users first. To give them a seamless, secure, reliable and convenient experience.

In making our  users’ digital journey more convenient and seamless, with WhatsApp Business Platform, our aim and vision is for users to be able to find all their digital solutions within WhatsApp itself for any requirement a user has, from morning till night, whether it's for personal banking, or travel and ticketing, or ordering groceries like on JioMart - she can very conveniently connect with the business of her choice, all from within WhatsApp.

We are already seeing gains in customer satisfaction, agent efficiency and improvements in marketing and sales – ultimately driving better results, at scale. Businesses want to unlock new ways to engage (for example, proactively sending a boarding pass or reminding a customer when an item is back in stock or even about deals for a big upcoming holiday sale). They want to move more of their customer support to WhatsApp. And they want to close sales.

As mentioned earlier, with WhatsApp, businesses can now tap the additional potential opportunity to connect with the ‘new’ or ‘next 100 or 200 million’ customers who aren’t perhaps accessing other modes.

We think with Business Messaging we have another meaningful role to play in the next phase of the country's digital transformation.

Key focus areas for WhatsApp Business messaging in 2023

With WhatsApp, we want our users to engage with businesses in the same simple, secure way as they do with friends & family and get things done, whether it is buying something, doing financial transactions or getting an issue resolved.

The four key areas that Business Messaging is focused on are:

Expand and digitally enable the SMB Ecosystem through the WhatsApp Business App: India has a rich SMB ecosystem with 63 million MSMEs in the country contributing over 30% to the GDP and has the potential to grow further. We believe that our digital apps and solutions can play an important role in their growth journey. SMBs are able to create a professional digital identity for their business through WhatsApp Business App and with a host of consumer-friendly features like Catalog, Quick Reply, Greeting Message, Labels and others, it adds efficiency to a small business like a home-baker or to any micro business who has limited means.

For medium and large businesses, we have built the WhatsApp Business Platform - an Enterprise API solution that helps to reach customers at scale. Every day, hundreds of thousands of businesses are onboarding the WhatsApp Business Platform to offer services at scale to customers and this is the technology that is being used by enterprises across the board whether it is Uber, MakeMyTrip, JioMart, WOW Momos, WOW Skincare, Sirona Period Tracker, MyBMC Assist, SBI, LIC, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited, or MyGov, among others.  With WhatsApp, users can do anything round the clock. They can do their banking, shopping, book cab rides, charge their Metro passes on the go, pay their bills, place a complaint, literally do everything at the click of a button on WhatsApp.

We recently launched the WhatsApp Cloud API hosted by Meta, effectively opening up WhatsApp to any developer or a business of any size to build their own experiences right into the chat thread.

Recently, we announced a partnership with Salesforce to make Cloud API hosted by Meta’s powerful capabilities easily available to all Salesforce customers globally. This partnership enables businesses to offer new experiences right on WhatsApp and easily manage these across Salesforce Customer 360 applications.

Click to WhatsApp Ads (CTWA): Ads that click back to WhatsApp and help businesses start a conversation with an interested customer brings immense value.

Businesses get discovered by new customers and are then able to build a direct relationship with their customers.

If you are a business on WhatsApp, you can create a link to be placed on Meta’s other platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. This adds instant discoverability of the business and helps the business gain new customers from those platforms and thereafter, engage in rich conversations with them and build direct relationships with customers for the future.

Examples:

Geeta Kundel and her husband Himanshu Pandir started NM Pickles after they lost their jobs. Using CTWA, NM Pickles successfully grew its business.

Likewise, Shweta Ashish, owner of Kalakusar uses the CTWA to enhance her business and on an average receives about a thousand customer responses!

We see immense potential for small businesses particularly, to grow using this new model of CTWA.

We are committed to consistently add value to millions of businesses and people for whom WhatsApp is a way of life, every day.